The Glo Files: The Mollusk Shell

**Edit: I recently found my actual birth time. I’m a Taurus rising! But the similarities bear present.

I am a Cancer rising. It is not hard to make me feel unloved, under-appreciated, or unheard. I push through the bushes people plant specifically for the purpose of keeping folks mesmerized by roses and bound by bristle. I am tactically Mars in Virgo, strategic and cool with a Taurus Moon that makes the learning process magical, fecund, sweet. Bonding is sensual for me, ignites every aspect of my being with light and vibration...but that pesky Scorpio-Sag cusp creates a cup of persnickety selectiveness I very often sip from when sizing up new prospects. Tap in a Pisces midheaven and Aries in the 11th house and you got a molotov of a mami, wanting to blend in and have forever friendships but feeling that this lifetime is meant for passing the baton of healing to as many as possible. Friendships are blessings uncontrolled. They are mechanisms of learning ourselves through the kaleidoscopic offerings of the Creator, but sometimes I wish I could un-create myself to get to the fucking point. The deeper we get into cancer season...the more I see astrology is a tool to heal me, and remind me that nothing matters and that’s okay. I make things matter by using a chart as a map of me, how to reach my dreams and reach inside without fear.

When people find out my rising is Cancer, everything makes sense immediately. I am the motherly energy, likely to call you a motherfucker and hug your spine straight. I like to feed and feel safe, and create safe spaces for those I love. Pero tambien, I like to feel safety. I love partying but I often feel a strong urge to just be alone with my friends, getting food or cooking and maybe crying idk. A huge part of me yearns for the ability to feel fully safe with my friends and those I love: to leave my shell on the sea and let the saltwater touch my molluscan skin. In that nature and my sagittarian nature as well, sometimes it can be so hard to ask for what I need from others. I feel needy, because I so often rely on my psychic abilities and natural nurturing nature to save others the trouble of explaining themselves. Sometimes I just want motherfuckers to read my mind, and when they don’t, I end up doing things like ignoring people when they cross boundaries I haven’t fully expressed or defined. Losing interest. Dealing with an abortion alone, dealing with family issues alone, dealing with mental illness, alone. I have let the moments I’ve decided to step out of the shell define patterns for me: and in many cases, I have confided in the wrong people. I’ve shared tears in places where there were no arms to hold me, expressed boundaries to people who treated my trauma like hangnails, and isolated myself when I could’ve shared my feelings with people who were equipped to love on me. I had a complex where I was made to feel that all I could offer is healing, assurance, and so much laughter that the fits and giggles consumed any ability to express my own issues. So naturally, I scurried to that sideways comfort.

Sometimes it’s so hard for me to remember I am worth so much more than other people’s joy.

 Sometimes I feel very child-like in nature. I like to be in corners, be held, and feel mothered. When I’m sad, I’m quiet and withdrawn and anything can make me cry. I imprint on people who provide for me in these moments, and my loyalty to them never fades. When I was 18, I started recognizing how deeply my cancerian nature holds me; everyday I felt like the moon card, pulling into the void and channeling poems from past lives...diving into the hope that I could be more open, more aware, more vulnerable while being safeguarded by wisdom of otherworlds. I fulfill that wish more every year when I reflect on the defining moments where I become the crab that went viral for wielding a knife. Except I wield a bow and I’m not here for anyone’s bullshit.

 

I have always had a problem keeping friendships. I’ve done so much reflecting, deflecting, projecting, and I’ve finally erected an awareness from the center of myself: shit happens. Some of it is a result of my misunderstanding or inability to be what others need from me, and others are a result of the other person’s inability to be the same. Very often they collide to create a magmic standoff. I’ve been taken advantage of, duped and had my name dipped in shit. I’ve spent countless nights wondering how people I’ve fed, clothed, cried to and held could hurt me, harm me, and deny the truth when I spent countless hours crafting letters in objective, understanding tones. I’ve denied my ability to hurt others, held grudges far too long, bit my tongue at all the wrong times, and allowed myself to be taken for granted in a miseducated attempt to lessen tension. I know myself to be intense. I know myself to bring fear into people because of my psychic awareness; the way it hits and does not miss, even when it is uncomfortable for others. When this awareness got in the way of other people’s ability to manipulate me, I quickly found myself experiencing summertime sadness and some of the most trying times of my life--alone. In this solitary heat, I heard myself plead to sweat out the fear of my own power. This is a cycle that intensifies every year around this time, where I find myself on the precipice of self-destructive decisions and inner death.

Pisces midheaven and cancer rising often make me feel like I have to be everything for everyone: a channel for the masses, a mother, a friend, a dancer, a healer. And while these are all things I enjoy being, I decide when I want to be them. Much of my anxiety is triggered by the fact that I’ve been inwardly and outwardly programmed to be these things, negating my right to experience things fluidly. Like anxiety. Or any form of illness. In my last relationship, I could almost hear a record scratch in the moments I wanted to talk about my aspirations, and dreams for myself. God DJ’ing me the fuck out of that relationship made it easier to intuit that same expectation of self-deprecation from other men, friends, and foes in fur. It’s like when I pull out of constantly giving and I want a little love, I’ve just come out of the sunken place and niggas try to hypnotize me again. Dub.

Around this time last year, I did so many readings and felt pulled by so many people I truly didn’t feel like spending time with. People who very obviously liked me because of this shiny ass consciousness sticker on my forehead. Even the friends who knew me before I became aware of ancestral pulls were unable to fully support or understand me, which created an irreparable tear in some connections I wished would last a lifetime. There’s something I abide by as a code of conduct for myself: allow people to moult and reform themselves, as often as they’d like. Hold people accountable, but do not hound them with habits of the past. In this way, you let them become. It felt a lot like people were not comfortable with what I was becoming, or rather, seeing parts of me unencumbered. I can vividly remember someone I had some of the best times of my life with accuse me of being overly emotional, or offer me blunts instead of a hug. I can remember people telling me to stop talking about spirits, not noting the light leave my eyes or the way I’d push myself back into old roles like an adult in a kiddie sized coat.

When I went through a near death experience during the last retrograde, I felt new life pull from me when I realized more clients messaged me to ensure my well-being than people I called friends. More people I’d been neglecting for fear of being vulnerable (but also genuinely needed, because of the very same reason) offered love. Peace of mind. Reassurance. I recognized how deeply voyeuristic and vulture-like apps like Instagram can be. After two hours of crying and questioning why God allowed a man to enter my building with a meat knife and try to rob me, I decided it would be okay to post it on Instagram. I decided it was the most comfortable way to ask for support. 225 people saw that post; of them, were two of my closest friends, who said nothing, but blew up on me after I confronted them. Among many things, this taught me that I can only have a limited amount of air-influenced people in my life cause y’all don’t know how to say sorry. But one of those people actually woke my ass up to something: it does not make sense to play a game of read my mind with people, especially because we are all going through it. But it is also 100% valid for me to be angry when I tell people I need support, and they accuse me of expressing myself too late. It is safe for me to be enraged when people say they respect and love me, but refuse to respect and love a Flo who actually expects to be asked how she’s doing, or if she actually ate, or if she wants to hang out. But on the flip, it is not okay to scream at the top of my lungs that I want friends who love me, but ignore those very same friends and scroll thru facebook for an hour because talking about my feelings with new people scares me sometimes because of past trauma. It doesn’t make sense for me to be selectively vulnerable, and only with people that treat me like shit. Unhealthy friend mechanisms were barnacles I had to scrape all the way off. This is the point in my life where I recognized why cancer has a shell and why pisces is constantly swimming: cause y’all niggas be buggin’ and water is safer than land.

I’ve had to learn to dead certain connections before they take their first breath. I was given a scorpio-sag (sagittarius dominant though, don’t get crazy) cusp + sag mercury to create a barrier of self-defense. I have a sharp tongue that is usually reserved for cutting ass but works in excellence when I need to remind myself, and others, that healer doesn’t mean I heal all your ailments here and now, and being a sagittarius doesn’t make me Chiron. This year, I had a person threaten to hex and slander me in a book after I refused to do free work for them, and politely unfollowed them because the juju wasn’t right. I’ve had people insist they had my best interest in heart and mind after using me and my channel, speaking ill of me, and suggesting I’m delusional for listening to my guides over them. Mercury in Sagittarius deems that I will never have to light a candle: all I have to do is open up the receipts of the shitty ways people move, and they usually choose to sit in their own delusions after that. I can see the shade coming from a mile away at this point: the crazed look of someone who doesn’t trust their own intuition, so they seem to need mine. Someone who could just pay for a reading, but figures if they’re friends with the cow, they have permission to touch my titties; people who see friendship the way sharks see prey. I think I’ve summed up like 40% of the NYC artist scene, but honestly the predatorial shit goes beyond art. As a photographer, a healer, a poet, and a person with eyes and a soul, the susceptibility to the bullshit can only be counteracted by a strong NO. I REBUKE the bullshit and I’m quicker to let people know how I feel. A ton of my issues in the past have been caused by not sticking true to strong boundaries, and allowing other people’s needs to come before mine. I cannot tell you how many times my guides have told me to tell people what I need to feel safe, to then see people bug out like I told them their eyebrow lady has a vendetta against them. But every year, I re-evaluate my borders and ask if there is anything growing on them; whether it be mildew or mugwort, moth food or wisdom.  

One thing people don’t often recognize about sagittarius is that, like scorpio, we are typically adept at noticing patterns. We are not afraid to drag ourselves. We know we’ll get back up: that is why we’re free. I’m open to people telling me about myself, but no one really has to. So when people love my honesty until I’m honest with them, I notice. When ‘spending time’ with me becomes ‘picking my brain’, I notice, and I delete numbers with the quickness. I detach. I don’t owe anything to people who try to use, disrespect or throw harm towards me. I don’t owe an explanation on an unfollow, a greeting at a function, and I definitely don’t owe sympathy to people who know what they’re doing. And very often, people don’t ask. When all of these thought processes are tempered, as temperance in tarot rules sagittarius, my boundaries are strong and upheld. But I want to take it up a notch. I want to welcome and create more spaces where we can deconstruct shade instead of operating in shame. I want to admit my shortcomings and help other people do the same. I am clearly not perfect, and refuse to operate under that guise, and this is part of how I disallow others from pegging that responsibility on me. But I think it’s time we all individually take that responsibility so we can stop pushing it on one another in the name of inspo posts and envy tweets. I want to use mysticism as a method of uncovering the madness, the wetiko of everyday life. Can you imagine a world where the collective knows when to detach because of certain transits, or where we use alternate technologies during retrogrades? Wouldn’t that be lit? To mother ourselves a bit more, in a way that is not deprecating or smothering but wholesome, nourishing, and responsible?

Cancer season teaches me that while friendships and fun are brilliant and beautiful, I was born to birth myself: no matter how much I cry or scream or slap-box with other babies in the play pen, I am still going to die. I do not want to die an automation, a being who shits and sleeps and cries repeating the same mistakes until I waste and re-form. That’s not lit and it is not me. I need my peace, I need my crystal meditation days and sentimental silences with my plant friends. I need to be in my cove without feeling like I owe people my soul. The gentleness I hold myself in sings to the tune of--I know I have a mission, but can you let me love myself too? This is my time of kicking and screaming and when I finally still myself, I need support. And that is something I have always, always struggled with. But I’m unafraid to receive it and share it mutually, so we can all accept all layers of ourselves and each other: be those multi-dimensional expressions of life that we’ve all been waiting for, to see the impressions of the other-worldly in this one. I’m ready to not be looked at like a baboon when I have anxiety at the function and I can’t stop smiling; I’m ready to obliterate the thought that other folks can’t understand me. The crushed glass, technicolor clarity of that liberty breeds a wake-up call: no one is your savior. No one signed up to be that. Your friends didn’t, nor did your parents, nadie. But there is a great sense of salvation in noting that we can experience transcendental sensations when giving birth...so bake up and be who the fuck you came here to be, baby.

What I’m saying is, I’m ready to transcend this starscape. I love you. I invite you to do the same and shoot for the sylphs and petition the airy detachment of presence amidst cosmic chaos.